George Roberts’ Work Blog

Outcomes-led learning in an open online course, #FSLT14

“Outcomes-led” is still very contentious for many (e.g. Hussey and Smith 2003; Scott 2011). On the one hand, there will be outcomes. Taking any of the reflective cycle models (Kolb in particular) allows one to anticipate some outcomes through an intentional design process. These may be expressed as “intended” outcomes or “expected outcomes”. There may, of course be many “unintended outcomes”, many of which may well be beneficial, though not necessarily expressed in the curriculum.

The contentious point for me is when anticipated outcomes (predictive) become intended outcomes (prescripticve). That said, is there something inherently inappropriate in expecting practitioners in a community to have shared practices?

So, I feel it is OK to have courses with intended outcomes. And, I think outcomes may be correlated with some measures of learning gain. [Need to check this.] On the other hand, having intended outcomes means you can measure their attainment (SMART objectives, anyway). And the fact that you can measure means you do measure and consequently you would expect there to be a correlation (because it is all just circular, really). If you give a target to a group of people with a reasonable skill set in a domain, the chances are that some (many?) will hit it.